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to him, and among them the one who had presented the draft, he had no doubt of being able to identify, and even swear to her person." He was then ordered to withdraw; and Howard brought Colonel Levison into court. "Here, my Lord, is a gentleman, who did reside at No. 160, in the Strand, the house where Cater drove to, on the Wednesday morning."

Colonel Levison!" cried the Earl in astonishment; but the gallant officer was so confounded with the fear of detection in his mis'deeds, that he remained silent, and Howard went on to say, "And now comes an important witness, this honest fellow, Gentlemen,"-and to Levison's horror Phillips came forward," this young man is ready to depose, that on Wednesday the 22d instant, about twelve o'clock in the forenoon, a lady, habited in black, came in a hackney coach to his master's door, his master being the redoubtable Col. Levison, now before you; that the lady alighted from the coach, and herself knocked at the house-door, viz. No. 160, Strand; that she continued in private conference with the Colonel, believed to be her father, for the space of ten minutes, and was occupied, during that time, in paying a large sum of money; this same Richard Phillips, having been despatched to procure a stamp, of the value of seven shillings and sixpence." "Where is the lady?" asked Singleton; "Just at hand," replied Howard; and straitway led forth Miss Bridget Beresford, at the sight of whom, Lord Annesley uttered an exclamation of mingled aversion and astonishment; while the lady herself, on beholding her father, whom she believed to be many hundred miles distant, was overcome, almost to fainting. When she was recovered, however, she underwent a minute examination by Singleton; but when he demanded to know from whom she received the money paid to Colonel Levison, and for what purpose it was paid, she maintained à resolute silence; nor even when Singleton menaced her with being taken into custody, could he elicit any reply. Just at this juncture, Howard, noticing the collusion that was being carried on, by means of

signs and gestures, between the father and daughter, cried out,— "Come and stand on this side, young lady, where, perhaps, you will be able to answer in plain English. Frowns, and winks, and nods, are a language not generally understood. I never observed what an expressive countenance my friend the Colonel had got, till within the last quarter of an hour."

Howard then advanced to Singleton, and whispered, that he had reason to think that the money had been paid on the account of the Countess Annesley. Singleton started, but gave him leave to put the question secretly to Miss Beresford. "He did so, and the whole truth was, in a moment, visible; the lady's countenance turned to a livid paleness, as she faltered out, "Good God! how did you know that?"

"A confession, Mr. Singleton," exclaimed Howard, "we have no need of any farther witnesses."

Singleton then went out, and after an interview of great length with his sister, in which she acknowledged the whole extent of her delinquency, returned again to his judgment-seat, and caused the Earl to read over a recantation, which Singleton himself had drawn up, of the charge he had preferred against Meliora Jerningham, and to repeat it aloud, in pre

sence of all the witnesses there assembled.

Levison and his daughter were then permitted to proceed on their respective journies, while Singleton undertook to act as mediator between his unhappy sister and her injured husband, offering to discharge, on his part, one half of the Countess' enormous debt. Lord Annesley was glad to avail himself of the liberal tender, but would not consent to run a similar hazard, by receiving the Countess into his house, and she was compelled to retire, on a somewhat limited allowance, from her husband, to live with her parents in Yorkshire.

Meliora and her mother had resided for a short time at a small cottage on the banks of the Thames, in contented poverty, when they received information that Howard was fled no one knew whither, having first, with the exception of a handsome provision for his wife and sister-in-law, made over the whole of

his vast wealth to Mrs. Jerningham, addressing a letter to her to this effect, in which he said, he only gave back the money to "the affectionate little Emma," whose tender intercession had been the remote means of laying the foundation of his fortune, and begged it might be accepted and regarded as the debt of gratitude. It was discovered, but not till after his death, that he had retired to a kind of cell, deeply embosomed in a wood, somewhere in the west of England, where he literally lived as a hermit.

Meantime young Sir Alfred Arden (for his father was now dead) returned home, and constant to his vows, claimed the honour of Meliora's hand.

The nuptials were celebrated with great splendour and rejoicing; they lived long and happy, and united to rear a numerous offspring, who were taught, in lisping accents, to bless the name of Godfrey Howard.

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you have executed your illustrations I shall not at present say any thing: it is my office to decide the differences of opinion which formed the foundation of each story; and in this must declare, that I agree with Sophia in awarding the highest place to friendship, as tried by the several members of the proposed question; for although Love has been proved to be sufficiently powerful, and said to be intensely pleasurable, yet it fails in being the most pure of the affections while Gratitude, in the highest degree a pure, and in some few instances, a powerful sentiment, still, to a thoroughly independent spirit, the weight of an obligation is irksome; and which must preclude Gratitude from being allowed to rank universally as the most pleasurable of our feelings. But the bond of Friendship between two exalted and congenial natures affords, perhaps, the nearest approximation on earth to perfect felicity: the affection which it feels for its object is pure as virtue-its power has been proved to extend even to the sacrifice of life; while the pleasure derived from a participation of its joys, must be tasted in order to be appreciated. To you, therefore, Sophia, do I declare the honour of victory; and having thus fairly won the prize, you are welcome to wear it as soon as you please." ARIETTA.

TO MRS. L, ON HER BIRTH-DAY, JUNE 5, 1818.

ELLE se passe Iris! Cette belle jeunesse,
Qui vous fit de l'amour allumer tant de feux;
Mais Alexis fait voir par sa vive tendresse,
Que de ce temps encor, l'image est à ses yeux ;
Il vous rend un fidele, un légitime homage,
Que son cœur à jàmais sera prompt à payer;
Quand on a l'art de plaire, et le don de charmer,
On est, malgré le temps, toujours du bel age.

AMELIA OPIE,

The Editor will be happy to receive an elegant translation of the above lines.

ESSAY ON THE GENIUS OF COWLEY, DONNE AND

CLIEVELAND.

COWLEY Owes more of his poetical fame to his metaphysical acuteness, than to any display of original poets ical genius. The fire and enthusiasm of poetry are no where to be met with in his writings. His language is not the language of feeling. He has neither the sublimity of Milton, the pathos of Shakspeare, the copiousness of Dryden, the delicacy of Pope, the naivete of Shenstone, or the truth and nature of Goldsmith. He excites no affection: he commands no sympathy. He is so replete with exaggeration, hyperbole and catachrestical decorations, that he is frequently monstrous and disgusting. Cowley was neither a phiTosopher, a metaphysician, an orator, nor a poet: for though his acquired knowledge embraced, perhaps, all the philosophy and metaphysics of his age, he never aimed at improving the stock which he possessed; and instead of applying himself to the discovery of new truths, he exercised himself in debasing the value of the old. He seldom ventures to think for himself; but having taken up some common-place thought, or philosophic dogma, which had been a thousand times discussed in the schools; he repeats it over again, that he may have an opportunity of displaying his wit, by viewing it in the character of a harlequin, and not of a philosopher. He has, there fore, no originality of thought, though, like every other harlequin, he is original enough in the views which he takes of the thoughts of others, but instead of using them to some noble end, he only brings them into contempt by the littleness of the purposes to which he applies them. In the following absurd application, for instance, of the doctrine of personal identity to love, how puerile, how unpoetical, is the use to which he applies his metaphysical knowledge:

Five years ago (says story) I loved you, For what you call me most inconstant now;

Pardon me, Madam, you mistake the

man,

For I am not the same that I was then;

No flesh is now the same 'twas then in

me,

And that my mind is chang'd yourself may see.

The same thoughts to retain still, and intents,

Were more inconstant far: for accidents Must, of all things, most strangely inconstant prove,

If from one subject they to another move;

My members, then, the father members were,

From whence these take their birth which now are here.

If, then, this body love what th' other did,

'Twere incest which by nature is forbid.

It

This is neither poetry, philosophy, nor common sense; for though Cowley intended nothing more than a shadow of excuse for inconstancy in love, we have not, in this passage, even the shadow of a shade, commences with a contradiction, and necessarily ends with one, as it is all one thought, spun out into a cobweb texture. If the person writing those lines was not the person who loved the lady five years before, he should not have written,-" Five years ago I loved you," as he maintains himself, that it was not he that loved her, but another person. It should, therefore, have been, he loved, and not I loved, for to write I loved, is to admit that he was still the same person. The same absurdity is more glaringly manifest in the line,

For I am not the same that I was then. for if he was not really the same, why not write,

For I am not the same that he was then.

If the reasoning, however, were even true, the application of philosophy to poetry, is neither philosophy nor poetry; and if some choose to call it wit, I have only to say, that wit always appears more natural in prose than in poetry. The pathetic and soul-moving language of poetry should never be prostituted to the purposes of wit. Addison very justly censures a passage in the "Paradise Lost," which represents the evil

spirits rallying the angels upon the success of their new-invented artillery. "This passage," he says, "I look upon to be the most exceptionable in the whole poem, as being nothing else but a string of puns. Of Cowley, however, it may be said, that the spirit of punning exercises a perpetual and predominant influence over his pen, and that it can be traced even where his subject requires of him to be plain and natural. Where can a pun be so unnatural and monstrous as in the language of love, or the description of ardent passion; and yet Cowley thus describes absent love:

By every wind that comes this way,
Send me at least a sigh or two;
Such and so many I'll repay,

As shall themselves make winds to
get to you!!!

This disgusting hyperbole is still
more tolerable than the following
description of ardent affection :-
The fate of Egypt I sustain,
And never feel the dew of rain,
From clouds which in the head appear;
But all my too-much moisture owe
To overflowings of the heart below.

Cowley has devoted a great portion of his muse to the charms of woman; but no poet was worse calculated to praise her in such a manner as would secure her esteem. Indeed, the woman who would not spurn his compliments, and hunt him from her society, must have been as destitute of true feeling, or, in other words, of natural feeling, as he was himself. Every man's experience informs him, that the real beauties of objects fall infinitely short of those which imagination "leads forth;" but how ill-timed, how cold, how insipid, how unpoetic, how unphilosophic, how contrary to every precept of delicacy, to every feeling of nature, to apply this truth to the beloved object of our affections. Yet Cowley has no hesitation to compliment his mistress on charms, which, according to his metaphysical and unimpassioned feelings, could not properly belong to her. In fact, the following lines evidently tell her, that his attachment is not credited by any charms which she actually possesses, but by those which are figured in his own imagination, than which, we cannot

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Cowley wrote in an age when the English nation had advanced half her course from barbarism to civilization. It might therefore be thought that the writers of the time would have been more under the dominion of natural feeling than the writers of the present day, because they had not removed so far as we have done from the state of nature, a term which is generally applied to the savage state. We find, however, that every thing in Cowley and in most of his contemporaries is artificial; that the spontaneous feelings of nature are scarcely ever recognized in their writings; and that in fact, if we were to judge of them by their works, we should conclude them destitute of these feelings altogether. This phenomenon has not been hitherto accounted for; and it appears to me that Lord Kames would have found it more worthy of investigation, and more properly forming a part of the subject of his " Elements of Criticism," than many of the tedious and trivial distinctions into which he has entered, and on which he lays an importance to which they are not certainly entitled. As the question cannot be more properly investigated than in the treating of the genius of Cowley, I shall attempt to place it in the clearest possible light.

Before we can venture to resolve this question, it is necessary to ascertain whether the want of natural feeling which characterizes the writers, and particularly the poets who flourished at the commencement of the seventeenth century, arose from the circumstance of their being placed midway between the extremes of the state of nature and that of the most polished refinement; for if it arose from any other cause, our present enquiry would be vain, for we should not only be tracing an effect to a wrong cause, but all our arguments would be necessarily erroneous, as they would be formed on an erroneous assumption. If the want of

natural feeling in the poets of the seventeenth century resulted from the stage which they had reached in the career of science, the same cause must have produced the same effect in all countries; and, wherever science has traversed half her course, we shall find the predominance of art and the extention of nature characterize the poetry of the age. The thing to be ascertained then is, whether this be a fact or not: whether the poetry of every country present the same aspect in the same stage of intellectual improvement I believe it requires but a slight acquaintance with the history of literature to discover, that the fact is what I have stated it to be, and that every nation is more or less under the dominion of art, by which I here mean false feeling and false perceptions of beauty, in proportion as it more or less nearly approaches the middle stage in the march of intellect. We find that the eloquence and the poetry of savages is always natural, and frequently sublime, though they seldom evince either delicacy or refinement. What writer is more sublime than the savage Ossian: he has even more delicacy than Cowley and most of his contemporaries: but indeed there is great reason to apprehend that he has too much delicacy for a savage, and that he owes a considerable portion of this amiable attribute to the mistaken generosity of his translator. But if natural feeling be characteristic of the savage state, we find it is equally so of the state of extreme refinement. The eloquence of Cicero and Demosthenes were natural and sublime, while it was polished and refined to the last degree: they aimed at no false beauties;-they endeavoured to excite no false emotions in the minds of their auditors. The same may be said of the poetry of Virgil and Horace: their feelings were at once natural and refined. But when we come to the middle state, how woefully is the scene reversed. Of this we need no other instance than the literature of the middle age. To the writers of this time, may be applied what Dr. Johnson says of Cowley and his contemporaries, that "they cannot be said to have imitated any thing they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented the ope

rations of intellect. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found. Their courtship was void of fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish was only to say what they hoped had never been said before."

The character, which Dr. Johnson here gives of the writers who flourished in England at the commencement of the seventeenth century, is the character of the writers of every country in the middle stage of science; but though the Doctor treats at considerable length of the prominent features, which characterize the poetry of this class of writers; though he shews them destitute of all true feeling, he assigns no reason for 'so remarkable a feature in the poetry of the age. Let us endeavour to explain it.

In the state of nature every one, who has the ambition of communicating to writing his own uncultivated ideas, indites them exactly as they arise in his mind, without art, order, or inversion. The more any writer neglects authority, communes with his own mind alone, and neglects the information which he might have derived from others, the more he pursues this mode of writ ing. Of this Montaigne is a noted instance No writer neglected more or perhaps despised more the aid, which he might have acquired from others. He always thought for himself, and communicated every thought to paper in the order of priority. "First come first serve," was always his motto, and therefore the first thought, that occurred to him, was the first he wrote down without waiting to examine whether the proposition it contained was liable to any exceptions. Accordingly he is perpetually raising objections to his own arguments, because he did not perceive the objection when he first advanced the argument; but having once advanced it, he suffered it to remain, and brings forward his objection afterward, the moment he perceives it. Hence Montaigne is all nature, because he never consults any other authority than his own

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